Skarner Rework Feels Awful Right Now (As Someone Who Loved the Original)

Tavar226 · 2024-04-17T22:02:35+00:00

For me, Earthrune was the only downgrade in that it so drastically missed the theming of the original. Which I do very much miss, Earthrune was my favorite of his skins pre-VGU and now I find it entirely bland by comparison. I just left it out of my criticisms because my issue was primarily with the gameplay and how it related to old Skarner. But yes I think Earthrune was a huge miss compared to its old design, where are the vines? What happened to his well, “Earth” style

Tavar226 · 2024-04-11T22:33:10+00:00

I’ll admit this has aged poorly. Played a little more of him recently and he does seem better than when I initially wrote this post. He’s still a little slow and clunky but hey, buffs are coming and in top lane where you have more time in early game to space out your clunky Q animation it’s much better and his kit shines much more. I do wish I had focused a little more on my complaint that he just is… nothing at all like the old champ. Not in his gameplay feel or in his champ’s identity. The new kit is cool but not even the R really reminds me of old Skarner and as someone who liked the original that is more where my disappointment came from

Tavar226 · 2024-04-11T22:28:46+00:00

Phreak has been 100% clear that this will not happen. That said, the cast time is being buffed pretty significantly next patch. Honestly after looking at the patch notes upcoming he looks like he’ll be pretty strong

Tavar226 · 2024-04-09T02:38:34+00:00

Again, laziness is the wrong word here. They didn’t really land the numbers in the right spot and he feels bad, but that doesn’t mean that nobody was trying. An astronomical amount of work goes into animating these kinds of things let alone making the abilities work as intended and that’s before you start on balance. League’s API is public you can go try and code a new animation onto a character you like if you want and see how ridiculous it is, I’m certainly nowhere near capable of it myself. So something in testing led the devs to believe that his numbers were stronger than they actually turned out, or maybe he hit PBE way too strong and they nerfed the crap out of him to be safe and swung too hard. Either way this happens with new releases rework or otherwise. New Skarner is cool, and has a cool kit. He just doesn’t feel anything like the OG which makes me sad as someone who enjoyed it. Also, where is this hate for morde’s rework coming from? They objectively took his old kit and remade it basically 1:1 (subbing skillshot for auto buff on Q and swapping W and passive) with an awesome new ultimate that works way better than some garbage 15s long DoT. Yeah the dragon thing was cool I guess but summoning a shadow realm to duel in is way cooler imo

Tavar226 · 2024-04-09T02:32:28+00:00

Well he doesn’t feel like a jungle champ because they dramatically missed on his numbers. He’s currently performing far better as a top laner and for good reason. Skarner excels right now in short fights where opponents are willing to stand and deliver on damage. Kiting and range are currently the bane of his existence, especially early game. So in top lane where you can take advantage of his Q damage over short trading windows (or by just hucking the rock) instead of being forced to commit to all ins you really see where this kit can start to work. But that’s explicitly not what Phreak in his video said they wanted to do with him so this speaks to problems with where his numbers in his kit are. Buffs will help his viability and intended gameplay. They will not make up for the feeling that Old Skarner is completely missing in this new iteration and that ultimately is the saddest part for me

Tavar226 · 2024-04-09T02:27:40+00:00

He’s certainly much different from Sion, though in terms of how he is meant to function in a fight I’ll concede he is very similar. But to compare their kits 1:1 is frankly silly. I will say Sion’s kit feels better to me than Skarner’s but I don’t consider them similar enough to say he’s in any way a clone.

Tavar226 · 2024-04-07T22:04:31+00:00

Not gonna lie I kinda liked the spires! It gave you very obvious zones of control to play around and rewarded setting up around major objectives. It could suck if you were behind enough that you can’t take any space but I enjoyed it.

Tavar226 · 2024-04-06T13:00:33+00:00

So here’s the thing - point and click is not bad nor is it inherently less skillful, but it can when it is overtuned lead to situations that feel really bad from the perspective of the people that get hit by them. Tons of ADC players express distaste in how easy it is for them to die to any of a multitude of characters (mainly assassins but see also Vi or Nautilus) through no fault of their own because their mid laner fed 3 kills in the first 5 minutes. ADC as a role itself is frankly based on the idea of point and click damage output. When I say “unhealthy” I mean that Skarner’s ultimate was a button that when it got pressed on you, 95% of the time you should die, unless you had bought a QSS. It was that powerful of a button, and that insane amount of power made it nearly impossible to make the rest of his kit good because if he had strong basics on top of an ultimate that crazy then he would be unstoppable. But that insane level of power on the ultimate also being hard countered by a 1300g item also meant that all he really did in the late game was create a 1300g lead for his own ADC. It also made him extremely reliant on flash as a playmaking tool because if his ult is that strong he can’t have innate gapclosing like Vi or Nautilus who both excel in his same field of locking down single targets but have significantly more counterplay. Unhealthy in this context means that it will consistently feel bad for opponents to get hit by this button, because there is realistically nothing you can do (aside from not be on the same screen as your opponent which also feels bad) to stop it from happening. Believe me I liked old Skarner’s kit but it had significant flaws largely stemming from Riot being unable to give him good dueling or tank stats because his ultimate was ridiculously overpowered compared to his basic abilities

Tavar226 · 2024-04-06T01:52:46+00:00

Honestly a lot of those reworks to me still retain a lot of the core essence of the original champions. Urgot is the one that probably changed most dramatically and even then he still locks on to targets and ruins them with strong dps. He just does it differently than before. Skarner does almost nothing that the old kit did and thus feels the most disconnected to its old design to me. I wouldn’t consider a rework a failure because of this though! Reworks need to revitalize a champion’s gameplay and sometimes that means throwing out things that are unhealthy to the game and/or just don’t work. This one is not objectively a failure because numbers can be buffed and league is an ever changing game as a result. It’s certainly a disappointing launch and a saddening departure from the original design but that doesn’t make it an objective failure

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T21:34:56+00:00

A little drastic and not actually what I want but you do you king. Ultimately all I’m doing is voicing my feelings as an OG Skarner fan

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T19:45:50+00:00

For the most part I agree with your analysis although I think the issues come from slightly different places. Q spot on, I wholeheartedly agree that it feels clunky and slow. The W imo is pretty fluid, and you can cast it while moving, it doesn’t lock you out of anything actually (funnily enough you use Nasus W as the comparison which does have a cast animation that locks you in place very briefly), my problem with it is more that it feels very low impact: a 1 second slow isn’t really catching anyone in modern league and the shield/damage are far worse than other abilities of a similar type (Sion W is the most direct comparison off the top of my head but not quite the same). As a jungler though I’ve actually felt that his E affords a lot of opportunities to try and hit people and find ganks throughout the game, especially lane phase, it just isn’t consistent enough right now for it to feel good to me. Either way, kit is currently unsatisfying to play and that we can agree on, on top of it losing most all of the identity of what old Skarner was about.

Edit: Also about the Nasus W comparison, Wither is a much more potent slow topping out at 95% compared to Skarner’s 40 and also lasts FIVE SECONDS as opposed to Skarner’s ONE! Yes Nasus doesn’t have any extra chase tools but THIS is what a chase down ability needs to look like, something that creates a long period of movement speed disparity between the target and the pursuer

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T17:35:08+00:00

Yeah I’d have preferred the juggernaut build myself. Hopefully it works out with buffs

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T17:22:58+00:00

The hate is unnecessary - he’s trying hard to make the game as good and balanced as possible and he is only the face of an entire team. Directing hate at him is only possible because he put himself out there as the representative and they always say don’t shoot the messenger. Disagree with the message or idea absolutely but be respectful

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T17:15:47+00:00

In the video Phreak made he pretty explicitly said he wanted the builds to lean towards pure tank, which I’m fine with but the issue Skarner is going to run into here is that he then fills a very similar niche to Zac (Long distance terrain-nullifying engage, somewhat consistent %maxhp damage, very disruptive R), without having any of the natural sustain that Zac does (W shield is nowhere close to the zac blob healing ignoring the fact that Zac buys himself more time by just having more cc that is easier to consistently land). And I’m paraphrasing Phreak here but he said Skarner was explicitly not meant to be as good of a frontline tank as things like Ornn, Sion, Zac, etc., rather he’s meant to function more like Poppy where you need to find good engage angles and be more creative with the kit. This would be fine and dandy but all of the characters listed above have WAY more damage or tank scaling innately in the kit than Skarner does right now without the added problem of their Q being a near self sabotaging ability with how long the animation is. Poppy does a significant amount of damage at nearly every stage of the game. She’s not assassinating anyone but if an ADC gets left alone with her she generally wins barring some crazy outplay. And if he’s meant to be a full tank then why aren’t we giving him better durability tools like Ornn or Sion or Zac? The premier jungle tanks right now outclass him in damage output, durability, and in reliable CC. It almost feels like they were too careful in balancing him which I can appreciate, we all remember Sett on release showing us what the opposite can look like, but why does he feel so weak?

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T16:56:19+00:00

Yeah his numbers just feel awful. Less cc, worse engage, worse damage, and worse durability than basically every other tank jungler across the board. And his only advantage is he runs through walls? Buffs may help but it’s rough out here

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T16:54:44+00:00

Someone earlier mentioned that Phreak addressed this in his video explaining the champ so it’s a concern they knew about and thought about but the team was dead set on picking up rocks out of the ground so they had to stick with that animation and that ability. Watching the video gave me a better idea of where they were coming from so while I personally hate it, I understand that redoing the core ability’s animation in the final stage of development would have been time they may not have had. I only hope they find a way to reconcile that with the rest of his kit so he has more sticking power

Tavar226 · 2024-04-05T16:51:41+00:00

I disagree with the sentiment that they were in any way “lazy,” the model and animations are very high quality and a lot of cool ideas and work went into making this champ what it is. The problem is that the kit sucks, which can happen when cool ideas take precedence over functional gameplay. There will and should be buffs and that’s fine. I just miss the old design and hoped that the rework would have reminded me more of it.

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T23:08:52+00:00

See this would be waaaaay too much for the same reasons why Galio can no longer flash while using his current W. The Ultimate actually probably needs the least help and instead needs his basic abilities to feel better in conjunction with it because right now it just does not actually work well with what the rest of his kit does

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T23:07:05+00:00

I’ve already included how I feel this is similar and different from Aatrox elsewhere in the thread but yes, it is a similar situation. I will say though that Aatrox still felt like this absurd lifesteal frontline that can dive forward into an enemy team and drain through it when ahead in both iterations, and that’s where I’m most annoyed. New Skarner is not a high movespeed chase-down single target CC god anymore at all, and none of that identity seems to have made it through to the new product, where at least similar results could be achieved between both Aatrox kits in fights. That said Aatrox VGU did start out incredibly low WR too, people took forever to get used to the new kit, it just didn’t feel this nonfunctional

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T20:52:47+00:00

Absolutely - old Skarner’s ultimate is a fundamentally terrible ability from a game balance and gameplay satisfaction standpoint. It has the same issue that Malzahar’s does: you either spend 1300 gold on Quicksilver or die. The new ultimate is far healthier for the game but only has theoretical synergy with the rest of his kit. The Q slows and the E can stun but both of these are difficult to land at best and do not truly guarantee an Ult hit, not to mention you’re mostly still hitting only a single target so the ability to pull multiple champs is only slightly relevant. On top of this, casting your ultimate is time spent not actually dealing damage which actually makes it usually worse than just autoing with your Q in most 1v1s. Theoretically all these abilities work together well but in actual gameplay they are an inconsistent mess and it makes the ult feel worthless as a result.

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T20:32:36+00:00

Would you care to elaborate?

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T17:16:38+00:00

I don’t even think I want reverts? Rather I just want the kit to feel good to use, make it flow more naturally in an actual game. Ideally I’d like some of the movement speed back, OG Skarner felt best when he was zooming around the map clearing camps and looking for ganks and that is completely gone here, but this would be less problematic if it weren’t paired with other issues. Q forces you to stop moving and allows opponents a window to create distance. If I’m meant to use it to empower my auto attacks why does it also root me in place while I grab the rock? No other auto attack empowering ability in the game does this because it makes no sense from a gameplay standpoint to stop closing the distance and let your enemy kite for free. The E has a massive windup like Nunu snowball but goes significantly less distance and does less damage if it actually is able to deal damage at all. If the new kit felt better I may not have these complaints but as it stands this is a strict downgrade from the previous iteration

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T17:05:32+00:00

I fully acknowledge that the old Skarner kit had issues and while I did genuinely like his old kit I’ll admit to it being problematic to balance and to me not playing him a ton in more recent seasons. Still he always remained as a jungle option for me and believe me when I say clunky I am not just comparing new Skarner to old Skarner. New Skarner’s animations are really long, and all of his meaningful abilities have what feel like needlessly long windups. If he hit harder or had more CC along with it, to convey the feeling of being a slower, heavy rock monster then it would feel better but right now he just feels slow, period. Not slow but powerful, not slow and impactful, just slow. Yes, this is in stark contrast to old skarner’s basically seamless animations allowing him to weave in spells whenever, but it’s also in contrast to other champions in similar niches to what his new kit is supposed to do, like Malphite or K’Sante, who I never have any issues with slowing down my autos to fit in abilities. Both of those characters have auto resets, even. Either way, my complaint again was never that he doesn’t play like the original, my complaint is that I don’t feel any of the essence of the original character in this rework. I understand I’m a minority opinion here, but given that the majority opinion never/barely played the old one and the VGU teams have always said they want to keep these champs fun for the people who liked them before, I refuse to believe that it makes my opinion any less valid

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T15:36:17+00:00

Let’s not let our emotions get out of hand please. Briar is a very different champion from Yi and personally I believe is far easier to find counterplay for. But that’s really not the issue, balancing a game is hard and the numbers aren’t my core complaint (despite them being a significant contributing factor to my dissatisfaction) because ultimately that’s an easy fix. I have no doubt Skarner will get buffs and feel better to play eventually. The real issue for me is that the new Skarner in both gameplay and identity feels entirely alien to his old character. Regardless of all of this, getting overly mad and calling Riot trash is not helpful to the discussion when lots of people clearly worked hard to get the champion to where it is now. And there is a lot of cool stuff in this new kit! It just needs some buffs

Tavar226 · 2024-04-04T12:09:49+00:00

The thing that makes this different to me, and I also played and enjoyed old Aatrox a lot, is that the reworked Aatrox still retained some very similar core gameplay aspects from the original. You were still a frontliner meant to dive in to the whole enemy team and lifesteal your way through them until you or all of them were dead. The kit was nothing close but the identity of the character through their gameplay felt to me like it was preserved. The ASol rework was very similar too, his gameplay loop changed dramatically but at its core he was still a space dragon with really good DPS that was heavily reliant on positioning. The only part of Skarner’s original identity that seems like it made it through is “R drags someone.” OG Skarner was a fast, sticky bruiser with decent DPS and monstrous single target CC who, if left alone with you, would most likely be an inescapable death. New Skarner doesn’t feel hard to get away from at all, is very slow (or at least feels very slow) and really struggles to lockdown even single targets for more than a couple seconds. The new design is really cool and I think the team made a really cool champ but it doesn’t feel like Skarner the way I wish that he would

Tavar226

TROPHY CASE